June 1, 2001 | If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the pitch: A nebbishy would-be cop (Rob Schneider) gains superhuman abilities after receiving transplanted body parts from various domesticated beasts. And – again, if you’ve seen the trailer – you’ve already sampled most of the movie’s best jokes: The title character’s dolphin-like dancing across a small lake, his ill-considered flirtation with a goat and, best of all, his close encounter with a huge bolder in the wake of an auto mishap. If and when you get around to actually seeing The Animal, there may be only one surprise left in store for you, and that’s how funny this genially haphazard, high-concept comedy really is.
In the lead role of Marvin Mange, a diffident, droopy-eyed evidence clerk for a small-town police force, Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider comes off as an amusingly and engagingly smaller-than-life version of a comic-book hero.
Marvin yearns to be a police officer, just like his dearly departed father, but is too inept to handle anything more challenging than precinct-house office work. On a day when all of the real cops are away at a picnic, he answers a 911 call, takes a wrong turn – and drives off a cliff. There isn’t much left of Marvin after that. Even so, an eccentric scientist (Michael Caton) is able to stitch him back together, using organs from creatures great and small to make a better man of him. But the end result is, at best, a mixed blessing for Marvin.
On the plus side, Marvin’s highly developed sense of smell enables him to sniff out a drug smuggler in an airport lounge. He’s also able to hear the distant cries of a drowning child, and dash through the water, friskier than Flipper, to save the youngster. On the minus side, there are times when Marvin’s other animal-like attributes – most notably, his tendency to whinny and bellow during moments of sexual arousal – are serious social handicaps, especially when he tries to woo a perky animal-rights advocate played by winsome Colleen Haskell of the first Survivor TV cast.
Schneider, who co-wrote the script with Tom Brady, and first-time feature director Luke Greenfield walk a very fine line here. They go for broad gags and shameless silliness, but mostly avoid full-bore raunchiness and gross-out excesses. Much like Schneider’s last star vehicle, the disreputable but fitfully hilarious Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, The Animal basically is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a sweetly goofy trifle that, for all its naughty-boy foolishness, is harmless and softhearted.
The first-rate supporting cast includes John C. McGinley as a bullying cop, Ed Asner as a none-too-bright police chief and Guy Torry as a black security guard who bristles at any sign, real or perceived, of reverse discrimination. The special effects are no better than they have to be, and the plotting reflects a casualness bordering on the downright sloppy, but the laughs come at a steady and satisfying pace.
